ON FILLING THE INNER HOLE AND COMING HOME
We’re Home.
And then we aren’t. Torn away from our origin, we came across time and space to another world. A
lesser world. But in that separation, something painful happened. We were no longer with God in the
physical space. We could no longer see Him with our physical eyes, or speak to Him with our
physical voice. Unlike our father Adam (`alayhi as-salam—peace be upon him), we could no longer
feel that same peace.
So we came down. We were torn from Him. And in the pain of that separation, we bled. For the first
time, we bled. And that tearing apart from our Creator left a gash. A deep wound that we are all born
with. And as we grew, so did the agony of that wound; it grew deeper and deeper. But as time went
on, we moved further and further away from the antidote, already in our fitrah (nature): to be near
Him, heart, soul and mind.
And so with each passing year, we became more and more desperate to fill that empty space. But it is
in this very quest to fill the hole that we stumbled. Each of us stumbled on different things. And many
of us sought to numb the emptiness. So, some of humanity stumbled on drugs or alcohol, while some
looked to other sedatives. Some of us stumbled on the worship of physical pleasure, status or money.
Some of us lost ourselves in our careers.
And then, some of us stumbled on people. Some of us lost ourselves there.
But, what if every single stumble, every challenge, every experience in our life was only intended for
one purpose: to bring us back to our origin? What if every win, every loss, every beauty, every fall,
every cruelty, and every smile was only intended to unveil another barrier between us and God?
Between us and where we began, and where we are desperately seeking to return?
What if everything was only about seeing Him?
We must know that all that we experience in life has a purpose. And it is we who choose whether to
realize that purpose or not. Take for example, beauty. Some people don’t even recognize beauty when
it’s right in front of them. They can walk through a sunset or a brilliant forest of orange trees, and not
even notice.
Other people see beauty and do appreciate it. They will stop and take it in. They may even feel
overwhelmed by it. But it ends there. That person is like the one who appreciates art, but never
inquires about the artist. The artwork itself was intended to communicate a message from the artist;
but if the art lover loses himself in the painting—but never sees the message, that artwork hasn’t
fulfilled its true purpose.
The purpose of the glorious sun, first fallen snow, crescent moons and breathtaking oceans is not just
to decorate this lonely planet. The purpose is far deeper than that. The purpose is as Allah told us in
the Qur’an:
“Indeed, in the creation of the heavens and the earth and the alternation of the night and the day are